* This column was edited and abridged for the modern reader by Douglas Wilson.
The original can be found in Richard Baxter, Baxter's Practical Works, Vol.
1 (Ligonier, PA, Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), pp. 424-426.

Exegetica

* John Owen applies the sanctification stated here, not to the apostate, but
to Christ Himself, "who was sanctified and dedicated unto God to be an eternal
High Priest by the blood of the covenant which He offered unto God" (p. 206, Hebrews:
The Epistle of Warning, Kregel Publ., 1985). However, I cannot find any place
in Scripture where Christ Himself was said to be set apart by His blood (with
the possible exception of Heb. 9:12). The antecedent of the pronoun seems to
fall back more naturally to the apostate described by the entire verse. But even
if Owen is right, one still could not deduce that the sanctified here is regenerate.

Historia

* All quotations are taken from Plutarch, Lycurgus ; Dryden, trans. in Great
Books of the Western World , Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952, vol. 14.

* David Hagopian is a friend, even though he is an attorney in southern California.
He is currently coauthoring, with Doug Wilson, a book on Promise Keepers entitled
More Than Promises (forthcoming, 1996).

5. Robert P. Lightner, The Last Days Handbook (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990), p. 84. It should be noted that postmillennialists and other nondispensationalists vigorously deny the accusation of flawed hermeneutics and an inclination toward apostasy. For a postmillennial response to the charge of liberal hermeneutics in general and Lightner's charge in particular, see Kenneth L. Gentry, He Shall Have Dominion, A Postmillennial Eschatology (Tyler, TX:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992) p. 144-173, 441-442.

13. Erickson, Contemporary Options in Eschatology , p. 62. For further details, see James H. Moorhead, "The Erosion of Postmillennialism in American Religious Thought, 1865-1925," Church History 53/1 (March 1984) pp. 61-77.